How might you get people who are enemies talking to one another?
Tamihana Te Rauparaha
A long time ago there lived a man called Te Rauparaha. He was the chief of a Māori tribe called Ngāti Toa, which lived in the North Island of New Zealand. Te Rauparaha lead his tribe to attack other tribe, especially the South Island tribe of Ngāi Tahu. The people of Ngāi Tahu became very scared of Te Rauparaha and the Ngāti Toa tribe.
Te Rauparaha had a son called Tamihana, who often went to war with his father against Ngāi Tahu. While Tamihana was growing up a missionary came to his village and told him about a man called Jesus. He told him that Jesus loved people and wanted them not to fight with each other, but to love each other too, even to love their enemies! He told
Tamihana that people who
loved Jesus and lived the way that he wanted them to would go to heaven when they died. Tamihana decided that he wanted to live the way that Jesus wanted him to.
For Tamihana to live as Jesus wanted him to he had to start loving the Ngāi Tahu people, and stop fighting with them. In fact, Tamihana thought that to show the people of Ngāi Tahu that he wanted to be friends with them, he decided to go and tell them about Jesus, so that they would be able to go to heaven.
So Tamihana set out on a trip around the south of the South Island with his cousin Matene Whiwhi. and a man called Bishop Selwyn. They visited lots of places near here, including Waikouaiti, Invercargill. Ste wart Island Moeraki, Otago Peninsula, Otago, Southland.Their trip took about a year, as they had to walk everywhere.
Everywhere that Tamihana went the Ngāi Tahu people were scared because they thought that he was coming to fight them again. But Tamihana said, "We have stopped fighting people, we want to be friends. We are here to tell you about Jesus. He doesn’t want us to fight; he wants us to be friends. If we love him and live the way he wants us to live, we will go to heaven when we die." The Ngāi Tahu people believed Tamihana and many of them became Christians. The tribes of Ngāti Toa and Ngāi Tahu became friends and didn’t fight anymore.
Prayer:
Dear Jesus, please help us not to fight with other people, but to be friends with them instead. Help us to tell people about you like Tamihana did. Amen.
Christchurch Cathedral High Altar
The six carved figures represent men who established the Anglican Church in New Zealand. The first on the left is that of Samuel Marsden, the middle figure on the left being that of Archdeacon Henry Williams, and the lowest figure that of Tamihana te Rauparaha, son of a famous warrior chief and a Maori leader who was baptised by Bishop Selwyn in 1843 and in the same year accompanied another Christian Maori to the South Island to bring the message of Christianity.